


Drugs

by orphan_account



Series: Two Brothers Holmes [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Cane, Discipline, Drugs, Family, Gen, Severe, illegal substances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 08:38:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1812151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is found with drugs on his person at school, and after Mycroft is forced to financially bail him, he too handles the matter of punishment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drugs

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: MENTION OF DRUGS AND DRUG USE

As far as possible, Mycroft avoided taking calls at work.

Poppy, his PA at the time, was rather soft hearted and inclined to put through any call if the caller sounded emotional enough. These calls could range from grateful people who's stalkers had been imprisoned by Mycroft to parents of murderers, sorrowfully trying to convince him that the murdered wasn't _all_ bad.

On these occasions, Mycroft silently thanked his parents and his schools for giving him an excellent social education and meaning that he could gently convince them to shut up and go away.

“Poppy, I've told you a hundred times, don't put personal calls through to my office number!” Mycroft called testily from his office one day, seeing his home number appear on the phone console.

“It's your mother, she seems awfully upset – talk to her, Mycroft!” Poppy called back, frustration appearing in her voice. With a put-upon sigh, Mycroft answered the phone.

“Hello, mother?”

A gulp, followed by a moment of silence answered him. “Mycroft, you've got to come back and talk to your old headmaster. He wants to expel Sherlock...he's been smoking marijuana on school grounds, and the headmaster thinks that he's been doing other drugs, too. Cocaine. Mycroft, you've got to convince him to keep Sherlock on.”

Emotions began to run through Mycroft, so many emotions, but he carefully stifled all except for two: sympathy for his poor mother and anger at his idiotic seventeen year old brother.

“I will be there forthwith, mother. Try not to worry about Sherlock – he's already finished his A Levels as it is, if he gets expelled it's no great tragedy.”

Before his mother could cry down the phone again, he sharply put it down.

Oh, Sherlock.

* * *

 

When Mycroft arrived back at Wilkes Preparatory and College School, he was struck by an odd sense of nostalgia. How many times he had entered those gates, had lessons in those classrooms...pushing his anger with Sherlock to the forefront of his mind, he climbed out of his car and steadily ignored the nostalgia. There would be enough time for that later. Checking his watch, he observed that there was still another hour of school left, and so likely plenty of time to manipulate...convince...the headmaster to keep Sherlock on. Sweeping forwards in his sophisticated manner, Mycroft swung his umbrella along too, his anger making his steps a little smarter than usual.

“Hello, Mycroft! What a surprise to see you again!” exclaimed the school secretary. Older in years than during his time, she had had a sweet spot for the intelligent, well-mannered boy, despite having been employed in his very final year there.

“Very good to see you too, Miss Plant.” he replied, a smile grazing his face. “How are you doing?”

Miss Plant's face lit up. “Excellently – my wedding is next month, and my son from my last marriage is just about to start his education here! How about yourself?”

Mycroft forced himself to smile again and nod. “Very well. The government enjoy the fact that I am multi-lingual.”

“I take it you're here for Sherlock? He's such a silly boy – so different to you, you know.” Miss Plant's changed to an expression of disapproval. “Still, he's very funny and charming when he wants to be, and almost as intelligent as you in his own way.”

This time, even Mycroft's excellent social skills couldn't suppress the wrinkle which appeared on his nose. “Yes, indeed. Shall I go straight through to the headmaster, or must I wait a while?”

“You can go straight though, poppet.” Miss Plant replied, with a friendly pat on his shoulder.

Mycroft tried hard not to shudder at her touch.

* * *

 

“Mycroft! It is good to see you, though perhaps not under these circumstances.” the headmaster spoke in a voice which was half-cheerful, half-sorrowful. In front of his desk sat long, lanky seventeen year old Sherlock. The smell of weed curled up into Mycroft's nose and he sniffed disdainfully, glaring at his brother's back.

“And yourself, headmaster. My mother called and asked for me to meet you in regards to the brat, so of course I came at once. What is the problem?”

Although Mycroft was well aware of the problem, he still felt it necessary to ask, just in case his mother had gotten the wrong end of the stick...

“Your brother was found smoking marijuana on school grounds...and some suspected cocaine was found on his person. Although Sherlock has settled down a lot in the past two years, illegal substances on school grounds are obviously totally prohibited. We have two choices: either he is immediately expelled, or we hand the matters over to the police and let them come to a decision.”

Mycroft sighed, before indicating a seat. “May I sit?”

“Certainly?”

“I believe that we may have another choice here, sir, which would benefit us all. If I happened to donate a relatively large sum of money to the school and Sherlock took a severe caning, I assume the matter could be laid to rest, so long as Sherlock isn't idiotic enough to do it again on school grounds?”

The headmaster admired Mycroft. Truly, he did. His cunning and intelligence really shone through, all wrapped up with a charming nature.

“Certainly, that would be a solution. Of course, if he was found with anything of that type on school grounds again, he would immediately be expelled...”

“Don't worry, headmaster, after I am done with him I can assure you that he will never touch drugs at school again.”

Sherlock glanced across at Mycroft after his brief assurance, eyes wide.

“That's very good to know. Twelve strokes of the cane it'll be, then.” the headmaster took no great relish in this: he rather disliked applying corporal punishment, but some boys just seemed to be begging for it, Sherlock Holmes being one such.

“I will excuse myself, then.” Mycroft told him, standing up. Quickly, he offered the headmaster a handshake before exiting the room, his anger bubbling up again as he planned Sherlock's home punishment.

* * *

 

“Mother?”

“Mycroft? How has it gone? What has the headmaster said?”

Miss Plant smiled as she heard Mrs Holmes's voice bubble down the phone – Mycroft had begged her use of the phone, and now she could hear every word of the conversation. 

“Sherlock is receiving twelve strokes of the cane and I am 'donating' some money to the school – he is allowed to keep his position here.”

Just as Mrs Holmes sighed with relief down the phone, Mycroft jumped violently at the sound of the cane down the corridor. It sounded like a gunshot, quite unlike the few times he had applied it to his errant brother before he left home!

“Mother, I'm actually phoning you in regards to Sherlock's home punishment. Seeing as I am paying his 'bail', as well as the fact that yourself and father are ageing, I feel that I should administer it. However, he will be in no state for further punishment for at least a week, possibly two, after his school punishment, judging from what I can hear.”

“Oh yes, of course you must do it.” Mrs Holmes agreed immediately. “Perhaps, seeing as the Christmas holidays are almost upon us, you can postpone it until then? He'll have something to worry about until then, too, which might keep his behaviour in check.”

“That's probably for the best. I do need to get back to work as soon as possible, so I will drop Sherlock home and then depart, but hopefully next time we speak will be on lighter terms.”

“Goodbye, Mike, I love you.”

“Goodbye, mother, and yourself.”

* * *

 

When Sherlock exited the office, he looked an absolute wreck. His face was pale, with snail-trails of tears glistening on his cheeks, while both hands were very lightly holding his bottom. He looked at Mycroft in a way that was almost  _fearful_ .

“Sherlock, I'm to take you home now.”

The younger Holmes nodded shakily. Twelve strokes of the cane, applied with such force, was far and away the worst punishment he had ever received. Though he would never tell Mycroft, it had been over his underwear rather than his trousers, too, something allowed but almost unheard of within the school.

“Mycroft...are you...am I going to be punished again today?”

Mycroft felt a odd twinge of sympathy for the boy, which he immediately tried to quell. He'd been found with  _cocaine_ , for god's sake, he didn't need sympathy!

“No – you will receive your home punishment during the Christmas holidays, from myself. Sherlock, what were you thinking? Marijuana, in our of your typical moments of idiocy, perhaps I can understand. But cocaine? Sherlock, you can be reasonably intelligent when you try, you don't need anything to speed you up!”

Mycroft was well aware that his scolding was perhaps gentler than it should have been considering the illegality of the situation, however considering Sherlock's shakiness after his harsh punishment, Mycroft had little heart to be too angry.

“The cocaine was to counteract the marijuana, and I hadn't gotten around to actually taking it at the point when I was caught.” Sherlock sullenly replied. As the two reached Mycroft's car, Sherlock's face suddenly fell. “I...I can't sit down in your car, Mycroft.”

Since gaining a rather impressive salary for one in his mid-twenties, Mycroft had splashed out somewhat: a large, comfortable car, a flat safely hidden away between work and home, a much grander collection of suits. He hadn't, however, considered the possibility of a very sore Sherlock sitting in his car, and the taut leather seats wouldn't be soft or gentle for him.

“You're going to have to, Sherlock, I'm afraid. It's a short journey, you know that – it'll be over in a few minutes.”

Sherlock actually smirked, but the aloofess of it was somewhat dampened by the fact that he was still gently cupping his bottom.

“Mycroft, being the good-goody that you were, you never experienced the cane, let alone twelve from it. I can assure you that it is ten times worse than father's belt, and the headmaster could apply it a lot more effectively than you have in the past. There is no way that I can sit in your car.”

Mycroft laughed. “If you're so bloody adamant – don't forget that this is your own fault, Sherlock – you can lie on your stomach on the back seat.”

And so it was a very funny picture, the inside of the car: a rather fed up Mycroft in the drivers seat and a petulant Sherlock lying on his tummy, strapped in around his stomach and knees (“We must keep at least  _some_ road safety laws, brother mine.”).

* * *

 

The Christmas holidays soon came, and just as he had every year before, Mycroft took the reasonable drive to his parent's house, to spend a week (his mother forced him to book a week off) in their company, along with his wayward brother.

Usually, however, he did not have a cane in his luggage for the trip. 

He hadn't purchased it, per say – there had been a raid on a dominatrix's house due to her connection with the drugs scene in London, and it had been fairly easy for Mycroft to slip into her large store room (“Some customers like to buy the cane after their punishment.” she had told them, licking her black-painted lips and looking half demented) and steal an unused cane, one of the more brutal there. The cane his parents had at home was, while certainly useful and painful, much smaller than the one used within the upper school, and so would have less of an effect on Sherlock than the headmaster had. Thus, Mycroft had been planning on perusing a larger cane anyway, and since the opportunity had arrived...who was he to say no?

“Mikey!” His mother exclaimed as soon as he opened the front door, grabbing a bag from him at the same time as she attempted to hug and kiss him. An apron was tied around her figure, which had began to show the signs of getting on in years, and under one arm was a rolling pin. Moments later, his father appeared from the kitchen.

“You go back into the kitchen, darling, and I'll help Mycroft with his bags.” He suggested fondly, kissing his wife on the cheek before giving Mycroft an awkward, one-armed man hug which neither really appreciated.

“How are you, son?”

“Very well, father – work is going excellently and I was pleased that the headmaster sent me a positive report of Sherlock's last few weeks of term.”

Mr Holmes nodded, smiling. “Positively glowing, wasn't it? Now, let's get your bags upstairs and you settled in.”

Mycroft didn't point out that he needed no assistance with his bags, but once they were in his bedroom, did ask, “Is Sherlock in?”

“Yes, he is...once your mother's mince pies are done her and I are going out on a walk, so that you can, erm, deal with him and he will be allowed a little more privacy.”

“Thank you, father. How are yourself and mother?”

“We're doing very well! Your mother's newest book has been approved for publishing and needs very little editing, and my Christmas bonus was rather larger than expected, which has made a nice little increase in the bank balance.”

For a moment, the two real Holmes 'men' stood together silently in Mycroft's childhood room. It was the same as it had been when he had decorated it when he was ten, fourteen years previously: painted a fresh cream colour with a brown carpet, a bed in the corner and a desk in the other and thousands of books crushed into eight large bookcases around his bedroom. It was such an anonymous bedroom, it could have belonged to anyone. Only the little touches that Mrs Holmes had added before Mycroft's arrival said it wasn't a guest room: a vase of carnations sitting on the windowsill, the window itself cracked slightly open so that the little net curtain which was pinned across it fluttered in the chilly December breeze...and the old, small cane, more suited for an errant nine year old at their school than the lanky seventeen year old who had had serious drugs in his possession that Sherlock was, lying across his bed.

* * *

 

Eventually, the time came. With the smell of mince pies wafting temptingly through the house, Mr and Mrs Holmes called upstairs that they would be gone for perhaps an hour, maybe longer.

Then silence.

_Knock knock!_

Sherlock had anticipated Mycroft's arrival to his bedroom, but he didn't realise quite how swiftly he was planning on doing it. When he opened his bedroom door, however, he hadn't anticipated to see a cane just as horrible looking as the headmaster's in his older brother's hand.

“Good afternoon, brother mine.” Mycroft smoothly said. After several recent growthspurts, Sherlock was only a few inches smaller than himself. However, due to those spurts, he was very much like a baby deer on his feet, lurching this way and that as he learnt to adjust to his higher frame again.

“Mycroft, how kind of you to join me. Do come in.”

Their feigned politeness ended as soon as the bedroom door closed.

“Mycroft, I have no idea where you got that cane from, but please do not use it on me. That is almost identical to what the headmaster used on me and I could barely- it was an extremely unpleasant experience. It's not fair for you to use it on me, and knowing you, you'll probably give me the same number of strokes too.”

The frantic way that Sherlock spoke told Mycroft that he really was dreading the punishment ahead. “Calm down, Sherlock. Not all of it will be with this.”

“What will it be, then?” Sherlock sullenly asked, glaring at the larger cane with the kind of venom usually reserved for murderers.

“Six with the normal cane, six with this one. Lighter than your punishment from the headmaster but harsh enough, I am sure, that you will not touch drugs again. As you failed to notice, because you are a silly, ignorant little boy, I do have the other cane here too.”

As if to prove it, Mycroft swung the lighter cane out from behind the heavier one.

“Now, we had better get this over with. Over the bed, trousers and underwear down.”

Sherlock snorted. “If you think I will take twelve on the bare, you are sadly mistaken, brother mine.”

“Sherlock, if you refuse to do what I say I'll inform mother. I'm sure her hairbrush will give you a very good lesson on obeying orders, as will the sixteen strokes of this cane that I will apply directly afterwards.” Mycroft readily replied, tapping the larger cane against the floor sharply and inwardly cringing at how unhappy Sherlock looked. Clearly, his caning from the headmaster really had been a bad experience. Slowly, the boy bared himself and bent over the bed. It was time.

* * *

 

Mycroft would never admit to anyone what had happened when he had tried to gauge just how painful the larger cane was. In what he had assumed to be the relative privacy of his work office (which was distant from everyone except for his PA), he had bent himself forwards, feeling rather self conscious and silly. After a few false swipes, he managed to connect the cane with his bottom rather more sharply than he intended, and even though two layers of clothing he had yelped. That had hurt  _tremendously_ . Mycroft's inner mind took that moment to remind him that when he gave it to Sherlock it would be on bare skin, so really he should test it on bare skin and make sure he had an idea of how hard to go. He could practise more easily when he got home, but he had procured it rather late in the proceedings, and was due at his home in just a few hours. Sighing, he quickly lowered his trousers to just below his bottom.

“Um, Mr Holmes?”

The startled voice of Poppy, his PA. Swearing, Mycroft ducked behind his desk, pushing his cane out of site. Just his head appeared to Poppy.

“What, Poppy?”

“I was just, um...” Poppy began to giggle, a well manicured hand creeping to cover her mouth. “I was wondering why your office suddenly sounded like the headmistresses office at my prep school.”

Truly, Poppy was infuriating, as she stood there and dissolved into laughter. “I'm sorry, sir, but I didn't expect to walk in on you in your pants, holding a cane...”

“I was testing it, before I cane my brother later today.”

Poppy's giggles suddenly stopped. “I can give you a demonstration on a surface, sir – I was caned rather a lot at school, you see, and I've a fairly good idea of how to apply one like that.”

So it came to be that twenty-four year old Mycroft and his young, twenty year old assistant stood together in his study, taking it in turns to whack the side of his leather sofa. The demonstration only ended when a particularly enthusiastic whack from Mycroft caught a thread in the sofa and pulled the side apart, sending stuffing at them.

* * *

 

Nerves coursed through Sherlock as he bent forwards, his bottom presented. The tramline marks from his initial punishment had taken two weeks to fade, with some traces of bruising only having gone a day or two before the holidays began. It truly had been a ferocious punishment, but well deserved.

“I'm going to start, now.” Mycroft informed him, tapping his bottom lightly with what Sherlock judged to be the smaller cane. “You may feel a slightly stinging sensation.”

Before Sherlock could even sigh at his brother's awful attempt at humour, the cane landed sharply across his bottom, and he sharply breathed in. That  _hurt_ ! Mycroft was applying it a lot more expertly than last time! If that was only the small cane, Sherlock dreaded to think of the larger one.

_Whack!_

The second one came down almost immediately afterwards, leaving little time for Sherlock to contemplate the exquisite pain that the cane applied. Four more came down in quick succession, covering the upper parts of Sherlock's poor, exposed bottom and making him gasp and twitch at every one. That was easily worse than the last caning he had had from Mycroft, which had been ten with that cane...

“I'm going to swap canes now.”

Despite Sherlock's hatred of people stating the obvious, he was grateful that Mycroft chose to warn him for the pain in his bottom was rather distracting.

_Thwack!_

Sherlock actually jumped up at the first stroke of the larger cane, which landed right on the crease between his bottom and thighs. Before Mycroft could comment, however, he was back in position, pressing his head into his hands. Why...Mycroft was delivering it almost harder than the headmaster. Just as with the previous cane, Mycroft gave the strokes quickly, leaving no time for each stroke to pique and merely getting it over with. It was plenty of time, however, for Sherlock to begin to cry. In an office, with an additional layer of clothing, stoicism was far easily to muster. In his own bedroom, with his sore bottom sticking up over his bed and the punishment having been applied by his brother, it was all he could do not to curl up and cry.

“We're done, Sherlock.” Mycroft quietly said. “Just a warning, though, brother – if you mess with drugs again I shall give you eighteen, all with the larger cane.”

Sniffling, Sherlock got up, and pointed a shaky hand at the door.

* * *

 

Just four years later, as Sherlock lay in a hospital bed, a drip in his arm and a hospital gown clothing his thin, almost yellow body, Mycroft reflected on the incident. Sherlock was drifting in and out of consciousness.

“Perhaps if I'd used the larger cane for the whole punishment, you wouldn't be here.”

Sherlock, who was apparently half-awake in that moment, smiled vaguely. “I wouldn't count on it, brother mine. Vices are hard to break, and so am I.”

Neither brother commented on the fact that Sherlock appeared broken then and there after the massive cocaine overdose that he had snorted.

 


End file.
